Mixer wagons are used in agriculture for mixing, transporting and discharging fodder and are on the market in great numbers. For instance, DE 298 20 836 01 shows a mixer wagon of the generic type which includes a chassis to be towed by a tractor, on which a container is arranged with a mixing chamber. The mixing chamber has a bottom resting on the chassis, an upper fill opening, and a wall extending from the bottom upwards. The interior of the mixing chamber has arranged therein a work tool. There usually is a mixing screw which rotates about a vertical axis and tapers from the bottom to the top. The mixing screw sweeps over a circular work area provided on the bottom, which is relatively small in most cases.
For increasing the capacity as much as possible, the wall extends obliquely upwards, so that the fill opening is larger than the bottom. On the other hand, a mixer wagon must not protrude too much in a direction transverse to the direction of travel in order to fit through the feeding alley or passage without getting caught. It has, therefore, turned out to be useful to provide the wall of the mixing chamber at the sides with a flattening extending in the vertical direction so that essentially only the front and rear portions of the wall extend in conical fashion. The flattening is so wide in the known mixer wagon in the direction of travel that it can accommodate the whole discharge opening for laterally discharging the fodder.
The discharge opening is closed by means of a slide which is movable in parallel with the direction of travel through an actuator. The actuator includes a horizontally arranged piston-cylinder unit which acts on the lateral edge of the slide. However, since the wall at this point already extends in curved fashion, the piston-cylinder unit projects forward, which evokes the risk of damage or accidents. Moreover, such a large flattening which is capable of accommodating the whole discharge opening is bound to extend in tangential direction relative to the circumference of the work area. This requires a bottom which at least at both sides of the discharge opening is larger than the work area, which is bound to create so-called “dead” corners, i.e., areas outside the work circle of the mixing screw in which fodder remains.
EP 1 084 612 A discloses a mixer wagon with vertically curved side walls and a lateral discharge opening which, however, must be covered by a gate. U.S. Pat. No. 5,456,415 discloses a mixer wagon having conical curved side walls in which the discharge opening is oriented obliquely forward.
It is, therefore, the object of the present invention to provide a mixer wagon which overcomes the drawbacks of the prior art and combines, in particular, a comfortable lateral discharge of fodder with a thorough mixing.